You and I are already connected
so deeply related – bound by invisible kinship
beyond this window into which you peer.
Let’s return to common ground
to walk with each other in silence
and remember together
our place in the family of things.

For two days, on the banks of the Erne surrounded by the historic buildings of the Watergate, Maguire Castle and Inniskillings Barracks, the Living Legacies team worked in intense creativity with two writers groups, the Fermanagh Writers and the Omagh Robins.

Awareness through observation is an aspect of Conscious Writing, a new holistic approach grounded in cutting-edge scientific research. It draws on age-old wisdom and unifies the fields of mindfulness psychology and neuroscience. Continue reading “The Art of Observation”

The ideas for many of the stories I write come from snippets I hear or read about past events in County Fermanagh. I first heard the tale of the Cooneen or Coonian Ghost not long after my husband and I moved to near Brookeborough, more than a decade ago. Continue reading “An Unbidden Visitor”

I’m sure many writers will agree that using a prompt is a great way to develop a story idea and get your writing flowing. So, if a phrase or a sentence or a photograph can stir our imaginations, what about using real objects? Continue reading “Hold Your Ideas In Your Hands”

The one certainty of a holiday is our having to say goodbye to it. I still remember how, as a child, I used crane my neck and look back at the Rock of Cashel as it receded, its massive grey becoming smaller and paler. Just before it faded to a dot, a sudden bend whipped it from my sight. It was the victory of reality over dream, necessity over wishful thinking.

In a small Chapel in rural Warwickshire a man is buried with three other members of his close family, in front of the altar. There is a rhyme on his headstone containing a curse on those who would disturb his bones. Why are he, and his words, still important today four centuries after his death? Continue reading “The Genius of William Shakespeare”